There is big resistance from vested interests in China that don't want to open up to competition.
— Henry Paulson
I was secretary of the Treasury when the credit bubble burst, so I think it's fair to say that I know a little bit about risk, assessing outcomes, and problem-solving.
I've always said to everyone that ever worked for me, if you get too dug in on a position, the facts change, and you don't change to adapt to the facts, you will never be successful.
No bank should be too big or too complex to fail, but almost any bank is too big to liquidate quickly, particularly in the midst of a crisis.
In all my life, I've been trained that when there's a big problem, you run toward it.
The income disparity is a huge issue. And I think that the only solution to this - there is no easy solution - are fundamental changes. That the world is changing quicker than our policies are changing. And we need the kinds of policies that will let us have a competitive economy going forward.
We must limit the perception that some institutions are either too big or too interconnected to fail.
What began as a subprime lending problem has spread to other, less risky mortgages and contributed to excess home inventories that have pushed down home prices for responsible homeowners.
America is the land of opportunity. We need to be vigilant in ensuring that each and every American has the opportunity to acquire the skills to compete and to see those skills rewarded in the marketplace.
My focus is on the financial sector, on getting credit going, getting lending flowing. I can't imagine anything that would have a bigger stimulative impact.
Taxpayer money should not have to be spent to save a misguided and mismanaged enterprise.
In pursuing economic growth, India and the United States share similar values and similar challenges. We understand that the global economy is here to stay. To keep growing and leading the world in innovation and opportunity, the United States and India must trade freely, openly, and according to the principles of the global marketplace.
I hope to help the Indian government advance their economic reform agenda, which will benefit India's citizens and the world.
We have institutions that have been allowed to become too big to fail because we had all kinds of flaws in our financial infrastructure, in the whole way over-the-counter derivatives work.
I grew up with a strong set of values - and one was never judging someone by how much money they had.
From the time the kids were in upper grade school and middle school, we took trips over the Christmas break to nature-focused places, such as the Okefenokee Swamp and Cumberland Island in Georgia; Costa Rica; Maho Bay campground in St. John, Virgin Islands; the llanos of Venezuela; the southern coast and highlands of Belize.
Many of the Western democracies - including the U.S. - have a problem that voters want benefits they don't want to pay for.
When you run a company, you want to hand it off in better shape than you found it. In the same way, just as we shouldn't leave our children or grandchildren with mountains of national debt and unsustainable entitlement programs, we shouldn't leave them with the economic and environmental costs of climate change.
There is a time for weighing evidence and a time for acting. And if there's one thing I've learned throughout my work in finance, government, and conservation, it is to act before problems become too big to manage.
When companies fail, shareholders bear the losses. It's just the way our system is supposed to work.
Complexity and interconnectedness matter as much as size in assessing risk in banking.
The country is polarized. And I think part of it - it is not just social media. We get our facts from different places. People self-select with so many different cable channels and so many sources. I think that is a huge problem.
I happen to think that global slowdown, the slowdown in investment, strengthening dollar probably provide more of a headwind than we get from the decline in oil prices.
The financial security of all Americans - their retirement savings, their home values, their ability to borrow for college, and opportunities for more and higher-paying jobs - depends on our ability to restore our financial institutions to sound footing.
When the financial system works as it should, money and capital flow to and from households and businesses to pay for home loans, school loans, and investments to create jobs.
As a steward of the U.S.economy and financial systems, the Treasury has helped lay the groundwork for the American economy to become a model of strength, flexibility, dynamism, resiliency. This is a system that generates growth, creates jobs and wealth, rewards initiative, and fosters innovation.
I will never apologize for changing the approach or strategy when the facts change.
An AIG failure would have been devastating to the financial system and to the economy.
Prime Minister Singh is to be commended for beginning the process of transforming India into a global economic power by initiating economic liberalization in the early 1990s.
Every American business, from the biggest companies to small hardware companies, need money to flow through the system not only to create new jobs but to sustain existing jobs.
I prefer to work at the policy level, on trying to fix flawed government policies.
I grew up on a working farm. It was small, a hundred acres, but we had cows and pigs and chickens and sheep and a vegetable garden. I spent hours pulling weeds, hoeing, feeding the horses, cleaning out the stalls. My dad was a tough taskmaster. I always worked, but we also had fun.
My dad was somewhat of a naturalist and used to teach us about different birds and trees. So did a fifth grade teacher who made a lasting impact on me; to this day, I remember his lessons about counting the needles on pine trees, seeing if they are twisted or straight, and about checking the tips of oak leaves to see if they are pointed or lobed.
The most pressing and significant problems in the global economy are unsustainable structural issues with regard to the E.U. - fiscal deficits and the structure of the E.U. itself.
When I worry about risks, I worry about the biggest ones, particularly those that are difficult to predict - the ones I call small but deep holes. While odds are you will avoid them, if you do fall in one, it's a long way down and nearly impossible to claw your way out.
I don't take lightly ever putting the taxpayer on the line to support an institution.
It's hard to punish and save the banks at the same time.
I believe that the root cause of every financial crisis, the root cause, is flawed government policies.
We need a new tax system. We need entitlement reform. We need immigration reform. These are not easy things. But it is going to take our political system working better.
The Fed has neither the clear statutory authority nor the mandate to anticipate and deal with risks across our entire financial system.
To restore confidence in our markets and our financial institutions so they can fuel continued growth and prosperity, we must address the underlying problem. The federal government must implement a program to remove these illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy.
As we work to promote greater economic opportunity for the American people, we must always remember that the American economy is deeply integrated with the global economy. That brings challenges but even greater opportunities.
The Treasury Department has a critical role to play in helping to set the direction of a U.S. and global economy, a role that reaches back to America's founding.
Large financial institutions in this country will always play a role that is essential to our economic growth. But they must only be permitted to grow and interconnect, throughout our economy, under careful oversight and with a mechanism for allowing those connections to be broken safely.
I was secretary of the Treasury in 2008. In that role, I had the privilege to work with many talented men and women in government and the private sector who labored to pull our nation back from the brink of disaster.
Indian-Americans are physicians, engineers, CEOs, professors, teachers, entrepreneurs. They are a vital part of the United States' economic and social fabric. Because of this long history, the bonds among our people and our cultures will remain strong.
We don't have the necessary laws or powers to deal with failing non-bank institutions. If they're a big bank, the depositor has deposit insurance, and the regulators can wind them down without throwing them into bankruptcy.
I never cared about money. When I was at school, I never wanted a car. I was focused on sports, studies, camping, being outdoors.
In my experience, the most effective professionals in business and government have the ability to get things done. They're trained to work with multiple stakeholders, to understand how to identify a problem, devise solutions, to compromise and work well with others.
As long as I can remember, I had a strong interest in fishing, and my parents, even though they had never fished or camped, took us on canoe camping trips in the wilderness of Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario, Canada, where I could fish to my heart's content.
